Never Look Back Read online

  ‘Get the doctor and then take charge at the school-house,’ he ordered Matilda. ‘We’ll need sheeting for bandages and hot water, and get anyone still at home to provide hot drinks for the survivors.’

  Amos Bradstock, the father of the children Tabitha had stayed the night with, came riding into town later on, his horse daubed with mud. His crops, like all the other farmers’ in the area, had been destroyed, but he’d ridden in guessing that down by the river things must be bad. His home was safe and he reassured Giles that his wife would continue to take care of Tabitha until the rain had stopped as the road was virtually impassable with mud and fallen trees.

  By midday the death count was nine men, fourteen women, and twelve children ranging from thirteen down to a three-week-old baby, and they used the church as a morgue. Some thirty more people were found, almost all of them injured in some way, from broken limbs to severe lacerations, but over thirty souls were still unaccounted for.

  Matilda worked flat out, stripping wet clothes off the injured, washing and dressing wounds and trying to comfort them as they waited for news of their husbands, wives, and children. Those who had already discovered members of their families were in the church, sitting in tight little groups, eyes bleak with grief, too deeply shocked to speak.

  Many of the women prayed constantly as they tended the injured, provided tea and hot soup. In a moment of cynicism Matilda wondered how some of them could suddenly become so caring, for these flood victims were mostly the same people they normally shunned. They were the ones Giles had always tried to get help for, the scapegoats of the community, accused of every crime, the supposed perpetrators of every epidemic. If they had shown some concern in the past, perhaps these people wouldn’t have been forced to live in foul shanties at the river’s edge.

  She wondered too how the survivors could rebuild their lives. Their few animals were mostly drowned, their rough homes and few possessions gone. One woman had lost her husband and the five youngest of her eight children. When she said grimly that she wished she’d been drowned too, Matilda couldn’t blame her.

  Yet there were miraculous stories along with the horror. Some people had been swept out of their homes along the river a great way, yet somehow found themselves tossed up on higher ground from which they’d staggered back unhurt. One couple sharing a wooden bed with their two young children had found themselves floating downstream as if in a boat, and the man had managed to catch the branch of a tree and haul them to safety. Solomon picked up a large dog which was swimming, still holding a three-year-old girl up by the back of her night-gown, and apart from a severe case of fright she had no injuries.

  But the miracles gave only faint hope to those who waited. As the day progressed and the rain turned to drizzle and finally stopped at six, each time a cart came squelching through the mud it didn’t leave its load at the school-house, but went straight to the church.

  The men continued searching with lanterns after dark. Matilda went down to the river just after midnight to find Giles and saw the pin-pricks of light on both banks. Now that the rain had ceased it was a warm, clear night, the sky studded with stars, and the moon casting a silver beam right down the river.

  Giles spotted the gig and came over to her, and for a few moments they stood in silence watching the lapping water, and listening to the men’s whistles and shouts from along the banks.

  ‘It looks so beautiful,’ he said wearily. ‘But tomorrow when the sun comes up we’ll see the full extent of the carnage. The drowned animals will have to be burned or buried, and then the funerals.’

  ‘What will happen to all those homeless people?’ she asked, tears filling her eyes. She had fought against crying all day, but now, exhausted and riddled with guilt that they had been making love while this was happening, she was struggling not to break down. ‘No one liked them when they lived down here, who will offer them shelter now?’

  Giles sighed deeply. ‘We will, Matty, and perhaps then others will follow. Maybe a tragedy had to happen to make the townsfolk realize they have to take care of their poor.’

  ‘It makes our problems look very small,’ she whispered.

  ‘It does indeed,’ he agreed wearily. ‘In fact it’s solved some of them for us. Tabby must share your room for a while, and I will sleep in the living-room. That way we can take in two families. It isn’t the solution I would have sought, but it’s the right thing to do.’

  ‘What on earth would Lily have said to that?’ she blurted out without thinking.

  To her surprise he didn’t reprove her, but laughed. ‘She would have had fifty fits, Matty, wouldn’t she?’

  Matty giggled, picturing the horror on her friend’s face if Giles had suggested bringing two families into her clean, orderly house. She didn’t relish it much herself, just the thought of the cooking, cleaning and washing involved, to say nothing of having unruly children rushing around, was daunting. Yet she was suddenly aware it was the first time they’d managed to laugh about Lily, and perhaps that was a very good sign.

  ‘I think I share her alarm,’ Matilda admitted. ‘But you are right, Giles, we do have to do it. Alice, the widow with only three children left, is one that must come. You pick the other family.’

  They spoke for a few moments about which one it should be, and finally settled on the four Negro children who had lost both parents.

  ‘I probably won’t get a chance to say this again for a very long time,’ he said, turning to her and touching her cheek. ‘But I love you, Matty. When this is all over we will get married, immediately.’

  She looked up at him and smiled. He had thick black stubble on his chin, he smelled of river water because he’d waded in and out so many times today. It was too dark to see the dirt she knew was there, just as it was too dark to see the blood and grime on her face and apron. Somehow seeing each other like this made them equals, and even if the events of the previous day hadn’t happened, she knew that today’s would have made them see what had probably always been there. ‘Then I can stand anything,’ she said.

  ‘Even seven extra children, and slatternly, grieving Alice?’ he asked teasingly.

  ‘You’d better ask your God to give me extra strength,’ she said with a smile. ‘I think I’m going to need it.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Giles and Matilda stood on the porch and waved until the cart with Alice and her three children was out of sight. It was the day after Thanksgiving, and Alice was going off to make a new life for herself in St Louis as a housekeeper for a widower with two children of his own.

  ‘Thank you, Lord, for making it before Christmas,’ Giles said, looking skywards, his tone just a little mocking. ‘Another month of so many children would have turned me into an old man.’

  ‘Giles!’ Matilda exclaimed. ‘What happened to your Christian charity?’

  They both laughed, for there was no denying the truth, the two months of having seven extra children in the house, and Alice, had been a terrible trial. Alice had been almost out of her mind with grief for some time, and her three remaining children, used to an undisciplined life down on the river, sullenly resented not only the restrictions that came with living in a minister’s house, but also having to share it with four Negro children.

  The four Hamiltons, aged from two to eight, were easier to cope with than Alice’s sullen brood, as they were sunny-natured and surprisingly obedient, but they still had their problems, and as there was no school for Negro children in Independence, Matilda had all four of them home with her all the time. Even Tabitha had been difficult, she resented the visitors who took the attention she had been used to, and didn’t want to share her toys and books with them.

  The house was too cramped. Washing and cooking for them all was a formidable job, but worst of all was the total lack of privacy. There was no opportunity for Giles and Matilda even to talk privately, much less have any time alone together. It was torture being so close to each other, yet unable to kiss or hold one another. Just the bru
sh of their hands, or eyes locking over the dinner table, was enough to send their pulses racing. Giles would go off out when it got too much to bear, but Matilda had to stay, and quite often she felt like screaming with frustration.

  But the Hamilton children had been given a home by a Baptist minister and his wife in Chicago and collected two weeks ago, and Giles had used his connections in the church to find the job for Alice. He sighed with contentment as they went back into the empty house. ‘I never knew silence could sound so good,’ he said.

  Matilda stood for a moment looking around her, suddenly aware how shabby the house had become. The wood floor was scuffed and stained, the walls marked by dirty fingers, every piece of furniture looked worn and scratched. ‘I’ll have my work cut out to get this back the way it was,’ she said wearily. ‘And we’ll never be able to replace all the things which have been broken and destroyed.’

  ‘We will,’ Giles said comfortingly. ‘Besides, it will be good for us both to make a new home where everything is ours.’

  He was referring to the many treasures of Lily’s which had been broken by their guests, and blankets, quilts and cooking pots they’d given away after the flood to those in desperate need.

  ‘I suppose so,’ Matilda said. She felt curiously flat, although she’d expected to feel elated now that they had the house back to themselves and full of enthusiasm to sort everything out. But all she really wanted to do now was sleep.

  Giles sensed from her tone that something was wrong and looking at her sharply, he suddenly saw she was exhausted. Her eyes were dull, she was pale and thin and her hair had lost its sheen. Even her pinafore was grey instead of the dazzling white it once was. He was immediately contrite, aware she had taken all the hard work of these past few months in her stride, never complaining, always kindly and understanding with the children, even when they were impossible, and now he could see how much it had drained her.

  ‘No work today,’ he said, wiggling a reproving finger at her. ‘We’ll sit down and make plans for our wedding instead. But first a kiss, Matty. I can’t promise it will put new life into you, but it will me.’

  That kiss was the sweetest ever, wiping out the trials of the past months. They clung to each other, all the passion they’d suppressed for so long welling up and spilling over. Giles picked her up in his arms and made towards her bedroom.

  ‘We shouldn’t,’ Matty said weakly, yet knowing she had no power to resist.

  ‘We should,’ Giles whispered, his lips on her forehead as he climbed the stairs. ‘We’ll be married in a few short weeks now, but we need one another now.’

  It was even better than that first time in the storm, for that had been like the storm itself, wild and frantic, now it was slow and tender. They had made love then in darkness, their hands caressing blindly, only sighs leading them to each other’s sensitive places, but now in daylight, Giles explored every inch of her, kissing her in places that made her blush and shut her eyes, yet it was so blissful she couldn’t stop him.

  She was as eager as he was to have him enter her and this time it didn’t hurt at all. Alice had once said early on in her stay here that her husband ‘bothered’ her almost every night. She said she had wished there was a way to avoid it, but he got ‘ornery’ if he didn’t have his way. Matilda knew Alice’s view on married love was common to a great many women, and she fleetingly wondered as she clawed at Giles’s back if she was a wicked woman to like it so much.

  But then, just as she thought it couldn’t possibly get any better, something began happening inside her. It was as though a part of her was swelling up like rising dough, getting hotter and hotter, so intense she thought she’d die from pleasure, then all at once she felt herself kind of overflowing, and the feeling ran right through her body, like shooting stars.

  It made her cry out and cling to Giles still tighter, moving with him as if they were one person, and as their lips sought one another’s so she felt him spending his seed into her.

  There were tears in his eyes as they lay in one another’s arms, a sweet torpor enveloping them. ‘These past few weeks have made me see just how much I love you,’ he whispered. ‘I can’t tell you what it was like, wanting you so much but being unable to even hold you in my arms.’

  ‘It was the same for me too,’ she said, burying her face in his neck and breathing in the smell of him. ‘At times I thought I was going mad, so don’t you dare leave me now.’

  ‘How could I?’ He laughed softly. ‘I’m bound to you, body, heart and soul. But sleep now, my darling, we’ll make the wedding plans later.’

  Matilda woke to hear Tabitha’s voice coming from the kitchen. She sat up with a start, for a moment thinking the child had come home from school and would find them together. But she was alone in the bed, and Giles’s laughter burst out from downstairs too, there was a smell of cooking, and it was dark.

  She fumbled for the candle by the bed and lit it. To her surprise she was now wearing her night-gown, the clothes Giles had pulled off her so hastily were folded neatly on the chair, and there was no sign of his. Clearly she’d fallen so deeply asleep that she hadn’t felt or seen Giles do any of it.

  The door opened and Tabitha peeped round. ‘Are you feeling better, Matty?’ she asked, her big brown eyes full of concern. ‘Papa said you were very tired and I wasn’t to wake you when I came in from school. We’ve made fried chicken for supper, would you like some, it’s almost ready?’

  ‘I’d love some,’ Matilda replied, suddenly so hungry she thought she could eat a horse if it was offered to her. ‘Fancy you and your papa making fried chicken all on your own!’

  Tabitha came right into the room and jumped up on the bed. ‘Papa said we must learn to do more things to make your life easier. He said you’d been worked like a field hand these past few months.’

  Matilda smiled. She felt so much better, all the weariness she’d been feeling for so long had just upped and vanished, replaced by joyous anticipation for the future. ‘It won’t be hard to look after just you two,’ she said. ‘Not now Alice and her children have gone.’

  ‘I’m so glad they’ve gone.’ Tabitha moved closer and whispered conspiratorially. ‘I grew fond of the Hamiltons, they were sweet, but I never liked Alice, she was mean, and her children were even meaner. I felt sorry for them losing their pa and all the other brothers and sisters in the flood, so I had to be nice to them. But being sorry for someone doesn’t make you like them, does it?’

  Tabitha’s opinion was so much like her own, Matilda wanted to laugh. Alice was a dour, cold woman who showed no real appreciation of any kindness shown to her. But at the same time she knew she should instil some of Lily’s graciousness into the child.

  ‘We must always support those less fortunate than ourselves, Tabby,’ she said reprovingly. ‘Even if we don’t like them too much. And we must pray that their new life is a happier one.’

  Tabitha grimaced, and Matilda doubted she would include that family in her prayers. Then the child beamed at Matilda. ‘Papa said tonight’s supper is a celebration because you’ve got a special surprise for me. Is it a puppy?’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ Matilda smiled. She guessed Giles was intending to tell her tonight that they were getting married. ‘Winter isn’t a good time to get a puppy, spring or summer is much better.’

  Tabitha frowned. ‘So what is it then?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you, would it?’ Matilda laughed. ‘So I’d better get up and dressed, hadn’t I?’

  The fried chicken, black-eyed peas and potatoes were extra specially delicious as Matilda hadn’t had to cook them herself and she wolfed the food down appreciatively.

  ‘Don’t keep me waiting any longer,’ Tabitha said half-way through the meal. ‘I can’t eat for excitement.’

  Giles patted his daughter’s flushed face affectionately. ‘Would a new mama make you eat?’

  Tabitha’s dark eyes grew as big as the dinner plates and her mouth fell open in shock.r />
  ‘Well?’ Giles asked. ‘Is that an “I’m pleased”?’

  Matilda looked at him and smiled. He was forty-one, but he looked so boyish tonight. His eyes were gleaming mischievously, his full lips seemed to be curled into a permanent grin, and his cheeks were rosy.

  Tabitha shook her head violently. ‘I don’t want a new mama. I just want to be here with you and Matty for ever, nobody else.’

  ‘That’s a wee bit selfish,’ Giles said, pulling a disapproving face. ‘Because Papa really wants a new wife.’

  ‘Is she pretty?’ Tabitha asked, scowling at him.

  ‘Oh yes, very, and clever too,’ Giles said.

  Tabitha’s face began to crumple and tears filled her eyes. ‘No, Papa, you can’t get married, what would Matty do? You aren’t sending her away, are you?’

  Matilda gave Giles a stern look, this teasing had gone on too long.

  ‘No, I’m not sending Matty away,’ he said, and tweaked one of Tabitha’s pigtails. ‘It’s Matty I’m going to marry. She’ll be your new mama.’

  For a moment the little girl just stared at him, then she looked at Matty. ‘Is it true?’

  Matilda nodded. ‘Will I do for a new mama?’

  A smile as wide as a slice of water melon tore across the little girl’s face, her eyes lighting up like two torches. ‘For ever and ever?’ she whispered as if she could hardly believe it.

  ‘For ever and ever, if that’s what you want,’ Matilda said.

  Tabitha jumped off her chair, sending it flying back on to the floor, and rushed to Matilda, throwing her arms around her neck. ‘That’s an even better surprise than a puppy,’ she said, her voice squeaky with excitement. ‘I asked Mrs Homberger why Papa didn’t marry you once, and she said she thought it was a good idea too. Did she tell you to do it?’